Pirates Walk-Through Attraction Soft Opens

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow has started limited soft openings at Disney’s Hollywood Studios! The grand opening is scheduled for December 6th. The team at MouseSteps managed to grab this video featuring the complete experience:

This is about what I expect it would be. Disney’s Imagineers are infatuated with digital video and projection. It’s relatively low budget and won’t break down like an audio-animatronic. I think they did a good job adding some real world special effects to complete the illusion. Can anyone tell for sure if that Jack Sparrow is a live actor or also on film?

I would rather have seen a bigger budget attraction, but these sorts of ‘exhibits’ have a long history at Disney themeparks going back to Space Station X-1 at Disneyland. As long as they don’t become the dominant style of attraction, I think we’re safe.

I only watched a portion of it (more fun to just see these things live unspoiled), but that was definitely Depp himself, not an alternate Captain Jack. I wasn’t expecting that. Of course Depp has been quoted as saying it’s very hard to turn down any opportunity to play Captain Sparrow.